Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Awesome! Truly Awesome! On July 28 Voice Afire put on Butterfly's Trouble, Act II at the Festival of the Sound. It received a well-deserved standing ovation.

Inga Filippova-Williams as Cho-Cho-San was stupendous,

as were Michael Marino as B. F. Pinkerton and Colin Fox as Butterfly's adult son, Trouble.
And hats off to the band: Sergei Nikonov on violin, Colleen Cook on clarinet, Paul Widner on cello, and Chris Donnelly at the keyboard. Karen Wood, as director, did a miraculous job.

About Me

Ray Luedeke, one of the leading composers in North America, was born in New York City. His output runs the gamut from entertaining theater pieces for children, through a long list of sophisticated solo and chamber music to colorful, carefully crafted pieces for orchestra. Recordings of his music include Shadow Music with the Louisville Orchestra, The Transparency of Time with pianist Andre LaPlante and the Winnipeg Symphony, The Moon in the Labyrinth with harpist Judy Loman and the Orford String Quartet, Brass Quintet with the New Mexico Brass Quintet, Circus Music with the Hannaford Street Silver Band. Quartetto Gelato has recorded Ray’s brilliant arrangement of Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and has performed it worldwide. In the summer of 2007, Ray started a new music theater company, Voice Afire Pocket Opera and Cabaret, and produced three shows, each reflecting a particular passion of the composer/arranger. I Confess, I Have Lived is based on the poetry of Pablo Neruda. The Pocket Madame Butterfly is an arrangement/adaptation of Puccini’s great masterpiece. Close Embrace is based on the Golden Age of Argentine Tango: tango dancing is a passion of Ray and Dulce.